When asked “How can you make local government more efficient?” Wanona Satcher ’02 knew the answer had to come from the community itself.
Earning her bachelor’s degree in 2002 and master’s in 2005, both in architecture from the Auburn College of Architecture, Design and Construction, Satcher followed the well-trodden path to a private firm, but found little personal satisfaction. In 2011, while developing affordable housing for the public sector in Durham, N.C., she knew she was headed in the right direction, but still searched for a way to use design for real social change.
Seeing urban farmers in Durham convert a shipping container into a mobile farmer’s market, she recognized the containers’ potential for housing.
Calling them tiny houses or “pod” houses, out of that idea ReJuve was born: using shipping containers or pods to rejuvenate communities. The nonprofit organization is currently in the process of creating a prototype pod house and engaged in crowd-sourcing.
“I call them ‘Plug-In Pods,’” Satcher says of her program. “I’m not moving into a community and taking over. I’m just trying to ‘plug in’ a pod to fit the needs the community has.”
Although the pods were initially intended as affordable housing, once word had spread, everyone Satcher met seemed to have an idea of how to use them.
“One wants a pod for a coffee shop,” she says. “Another lady is a nail artist who wants to build a nail shop. Some musicians in Durham wanted a pod they could take on the road as a portable stage, and doctors working with dementia patients have been interested in pods as accessible dwelling units. UNC Chapel Hill even had an idea of creating mobile health clinics to help in isolated rural communities.”
With so many possibilities, Satcher redirected ReJuve’s focus from primarily housing-oriented pods to putting ready-to-customize pods in the hands of the people who want them.
Container homes have been around for decades, but in most instances are lavish to the point of unaffordability for a majority of people. Satcher said her few competitors can charge in excess of $100,000 for a “tiny house”; she intends the Plug-In Pods to cost $20,000 and retail at around $40,000 or less by using recyclable materials and locally sourced jobs.
“I don’t need a corporation to help me,” she says. “I need local welders. I need carpenters. I need the community to help me build these things.”
In addition to designing the prototype pod, Satcher is also working on a land-trust model to partner with investors and philanthropists to buy property and keep housing.
“My vision is to build pod communities around the globe where we infill vacant lots with shipping containers. People can live, work and play in that space without having to gentrify or displace.”
The first Plug-In Pod affordable home is scheduled to be completed by the summer of 2017. In time, Satcher intends to open a for-profit wing of ReJuve that would allow her to build Plug-In Pods full-time as well as offset the cost of its non-profit sector.